The BBC's business editor Robert Peston is under fire from the Daily Mail among others for his story yesterday saying that banks Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB had a 'secret' meeting with chancellor of the exchequer Alistair Darling. Shares in RBS and Halifax Bank of Scotland (which is trying to merge with Lloyds TSB) promptly plummeted by around 40 per cent each. But Pesto appears to have been right. Today Darling announced a £50bn bailout for UK banks along with a scheme to underwrite their loans to each other and an extra £200bn from the Bank of England to loosen up credit markets. What's a hack supposed to do? What's annoying the Mail, some City traders and, in this instance the Government, is Pesto's ability to announce things way in advance of anyone else (that's called a scoop, Daily Mail). Someone, presumably at one of the banks or maybe a civil servant, is feeding him this stuff. Maybe the Government was dithering over the extent of the bailout and a nice share collapse actually suited the banks. But you can hardly blame Peston for reporting it. Sounds like a bad case of sour grapes to me.